Growing Up with Cerebral Palsy Revision 4

[Todd]

Hi Mark,

I appreciate your read and your connection with the subject matter. You wondered what experience I'm writing this from. For many of my poems I am an observer. In this case, I'm pretty much the speaker. This is one of the few poems that is as close to confessional poetry as I allow myself. That said, of course the poem stands alone and I have don't confuse critique with a critique on my actual experience. It was hard to find the distance to even get to this point with it.

Hi Todd, this is already a very good poem and personally I am struggling to come up with a decent critique that is worthy of the poem. When I saw the title in the reader I headed straight for it and have read it several times now. Cerebral Palsy is an issue close to my heart as my Dad had it. I know all about my Dad's life from what the doctors said when he was born through his school days and beyond and there are certain similarities with your poem that are almost replica situations, which makes me wonder from what experience you are writing this. Although that's not me asking, it is a poem and I should treat it as a poem, but to me it is so much more than a poem so I don't know what use I can be of...

I. Infant       -- I like the separate headings indicating stages of life. I also went and found this in NaPM and then realised that the theme was a list poem.
 
I began as an actuarial calculation -- An excellent start, I was unaware of the term 'actuarial' before, sonically and visually it works well with 'calculation'. Together they emphasise the cold, mathematical efficiency of a process that seems not to notice that there is a human involved.
back when they did figures by slide rule,
a strange alchemy of Euclid’s perfect numbers, -- not sure of the word 'strange' here, although 'alchemy' is perfect. A word like 'fantastic' or perhaps 'eccentric' essentially could mean the same as 'strange' but also with additional meaning. It all depends how you want the tone of this early passage to be, miraculous or...--Thanks I'll give this a look and try to pare back some of the unnecessary modifiers.
my two-pound weight, 
and my mother’s painted on smile
to determine a 38% chance. Peter Singer -- I presume that the 38% is an actual figure that has to be reached through this cold calculation, I was unaware that such methods were ever used. And ermm Peter Singer, I had never heard of him before. But now, yes, he is a conundrum and a half, but lets not let him distract from the poem. It may be a very definite Australian reference that people from other countries will not know but I was fine with looking it up and I understand the tone used here.
had not yet written
to reject my being a person.
 
II. Toddler
 
I crawled and continued to crawl, -- This seems to take on two meanings whether it be intentional or not. The obvious one being a disability which would necessitate crawling, the other one could be how a person with cerebral palsy might feel in society due to how they are treated. I know that your saying that he crawled and never developed into walking, but it has took me a couple of reads before I got that, but I think it could be more to do with the way I read it the first time. Perhaps someone else will say yes or no to how obvious it is.
and my mother’s world shrank
to what would never be. Dreams
like a blighted field. Children 
are not the reason for divorce. 
We mean to say, not the only reason. -- This the only stanza that touches on how others lives are effected. It is very poignant.
 
III. Preschool
 
I wore leg braces under my pants
so my parents would feel normal.
This was my normal. Frankenstein’s Monster -- The inclusion of Frankenstein's Monster is a great addition here,
clomped like me, and didn’t know -- also like clomped which as well as having an awkward cumbersome feel about it also has a slight hint of humour about it. Humour on the narrators part and his view of himself as if we are seeing a character and resilience starting to form at this age.
that all babies weren’t born by lightning.
 
IV. Elementary School
 
I learned that friends happen
when you stay very still,
never break a pencil, never go
to the sharpener. -- This is a sad but well thought out stanza, I actually didn't fully get what was happening the first two or three times I read it, but it's just clicked now. Perhaps the two lines below should not be separate from this part and even perhaps connected with another line or word not 'because' but something that would serve the same purpose. The reason he wants not to stand out is because children can be the cruelest most vicious of predators.--I'll consider the rearrangement of the strophe.
 
Children aren’t innocent,
and they hunt in packs. -- Although I think you have expressed it well here I think perhaps there is a chance to add just a bit more to stress how big the problem is because I think that this is the age where children are the cruelest and for someone who is different it must be such a massive issue.--Good thoughts. I'll give this some consideration.
 
The principal said that a human bite
is filthier than a dog's when I bit
into Mickey’s forearm and spat
blood on him as his friend’s let go
of my arms.
 
Now they all just walk like me
when they think I’m not looking. -- is there a possibility of bringing in 'clomp' again here in some way that benefits the narrator as he is the only one that is aware of the whole situation.--I'll consider it.

V. Junior High

These years are a burning fuse
for a town too small to have a McDonalds.
The acid of puberty mixed with nothing
to do made us fight. I never stopped -- I'm getting the sense here things have moved on a step and the mention of 'us' means that the fighting is not because people are making fun of him and him reacting, but more so that is just what they do. Have I got this correct.--I meant it to be them making fun but mostly because they're bored and want to fight. If it wasn't one thing they would have focused on something else. Fighting just seemed to be something we all did.
fighting, 138 times and then I quit -- I like the very specific number here, is it intentionally related to the 38% reference in the first stanza... it seems to make sense that way for me.
counting.
 
I started getting love letters
that was the way girls fought.
 
VI. High School
 
There was a cure for me.
Saw through the femur, and re-hamstring
like a guitar—a coin flip of normal or paralyzed. -- I've just read about this operation now. What I didn't immediately get on the first time of reading was the importance of how this procedure could go one way or the just as easily. I know that 'a coin flip' illustrates how easily both outcomes are possible and in some ways that is perfect but I kind of want something more dramatic here, like THIS IS IT. Off the top of my head it's Russian Roulette with three bullets in the gun or something similar.--I'll think about it. The odds might be better now. It's been about 35 years. It was described to me as 50/50 at the time. I'll give the idea of added drama some thought.
 
I missed being able to hit someone. It felt like love.
 
Kid in a wheelchair tells me how lucky I am.
Everyone’s heaven is someone’s hell. -- I was in two minds as to say whether or not this is bordering on cliche... "Someone's heaven is someone's hell" would be the cliche. But it's whether or not this gets away with it in this context. I'll need to think on this one thing a bit more, I feel as though I could be missing certain subtleties due to the late hour I now find myself writing this.--It's probably at least too predictable if not clicle. I think I'll just cut the Everyone line and let it sit without that line.

The freedom of not giving a shit
is like a flower that breaks through the pavement. -- I really like this ending and especially the last line which reminds me very much of one of my favourite quotes, "The drops of rain make a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling."  -  Lucretius, however I think that the flower breaking through the pavement is a far more powerful image.

~~
Made some slight edits to one of my NaPM poems.

I have actually done a better critique than what I thought I would be able to do. I thought that I would be making constant references to what I know about my Dad's life and how relevant etc... But I didn't, thank goodness for that.
As I said at the beginning I think this is a very good poem indeed that I would struggle to improve myself. I think that you have covered the subject of cerebral palsy intelligently and more importantly humanly. There are elements that I know for a fact to be extremely accurate in their representation, in some ways it makes it even more amazing that the situations that I am comparing have happened on total opposite sides of the planet. Human nature being the one constant.

Thanks for sharing this poem Todd, it was there all the time in NaPM and I was blissfully unaware,

Cheers for the read,

Mark

Thank you Mark. I appreciate the time you spent with the poem.

Best,

Todd